I had a dream. Or do I have?

I realized that what woke me up was not the alarm but the rather unusual dream involving me and my eighth standard English teacher.

I don't usually dream about my English teacher. In fact, I would much rather fantasize about my History teacher, Ms Amudha. Now, she was a looker. Her intricate explanations of the Battle of Waterloo were often accompanied with bad pronunciation and exquisite swaying of the hips. My years of puberty were spent imagining myself being taught the philosophies of Kajuraho by her in my make-believe nocturnal tuition sessions. Fellow pimple-ridden teenagers of my age at that time would immediately connect this above-mentioned fantasy with a specific website that catered to its clientele by providing erotic literature of the lowest quality.

Sundhari, my English teacher, must have been forty when she had been teaching me. She weighed at least 90 kilos, tied her hair in a bun, would walk around with a wooden ruler to punish wrong-doers ("Show me your knuckles!"), and always held the strong belief that 'asif' was short for 'housewife'. So, now you can understand why I had woken up.

It is said that we have five minutes after waking up to try and remember whatever we can from our dreams before they shatter like dropped china. But, sadly, this dream was like a dropped bread that leaves a gooey butter mark on the floor the stench of which never goes away. I can still remember the dream.

It was a classroom. I cannot imagine meeting her anywhere else. I don't think she existed anywhere else. She was in her usual position - which was behind the desk, standing with her weight resting on her arms which were placed firmly on the table. Maybe it was because of her obscene weight or maybe it was her natural bone structure - but I have always marveled at the outward-bent arms. It usually made a sickening angle with the vertical - like the legs of a cartoon table on which Coyote's head is being smashed repeatedly by a bouncing anvil.

"Your grandfather is dead, Rajagopal."

Now, this was a curious thing to say not merely because it was a rather morbid pronouncement in such a pseudo-comic setting but also because he has been dead for ten years.

"Can I go home, then, ma'am?"

Back in school, I have always addressed all my female teachers as 'miss'. She had always been 'Sundhari Miss' or 'English Miss'. Yes, I know. I am one of those. But, thankfully, my dream-self seemed to have grown up with me.

"Your grandfather is dead, Rajagopal."

Second time around, I was getting rather agitated and pissed off with the fact that the announcement required an exclamation point that she was not yielding. She seemed to say it with the same intensity she reserved for adverbs and conjugate verbs - those being two of the many things she had had no clue about.

"Yes, ma'am. I know. Can I go home now?"

It would have been wonderful had Ms Amudha walked in at that time. But I have never been able to master lucid dreaming. Ms Sundhari just stood there with her back to a funeral pyre and said:

"Your imagination is getting rather macabre, Rajagopal."

I was getting darker and meaner and still no exclamation point. What does it take to shock this woman? Wasn't she affected by my sinister ideas? Does not the fact that her favorite student (Yes. One of those.) is now thinking a lot about mortality and is being paranoid about death shake her very core?

"I am sorry, ma'am. I will try thinking about submarines."

"You may go."

I turned to do so when I felt something hard and grainy on my shoulder. The wooden ruler. With a very audible gulp that came out as a speech bubble, I turned around.

"Your usage of tense is pathetic, Rajagopal! Show me your knuckles!"